Congrats . You definitely deserve it.Sorry if this is the wrong thread for this (I posted this in the Berkeley 2010 thread but realized this is probably a better place for it), but I logged into Bearfacts (really just on a whim without receiving any e-mails telling me I had an offer waiting) and it says I have a law grant of $16,000 for the '10-'11 year. Anybody know if this award is guaranteed to be renewed in the '11-'12 and '12-'13 years (in other words, is it really an offer of $48,000, but over three years)? Moreover, you guys know if this is a need or merit-based award, or a combo of the two (kind of like how Chicago combines them, or is it like UCLA where the two are completely separate); should I expect to receive an additional award from Berkeley? Thanks.

I'm a CA resident, so the difference in COA between CLS and Berkeley is more than $75K for me. And when you add in little things like health insurance (at Berkeley, health insurance is covered by your tuition; at CLS, it's a separate $2K/yr charge) and the slightly higher COL in Manhattan, Berkeley will easily be $100K cheaper than CLS over three years. I have money saved up after years of work, so I could get out of Berkeley with just $20K-$30K in debt--or, if I get a 2L summer firm job, no debt at all. That is hard to pass up.

I'm still open to the idea of attending CLS, but they're probably going to have to offer me some $$ to pull me away from Berkeley. And I suppose there's a chance that I'll go to Berkeley's ASD on Friday and be really turned off by the experience. I doubt it, though.

Oh, and as you almost surely know, I would choose Yale over the other two in a heartbeat. But I think the chances of me getting accepted by Yale are so remote that I'm not even really counting it as an option. If I manage to win the YLS admissions lottery, I'll be thrilled. I am, however, proceeding under the assumption that it's not happening.

daviddel03 wrote:Do you guys know if they're pretty much done giving aid? Has the process just begun, or should i be worried that nothing appears in Bearfacts?

Berkeley says that they hand out aid on a rolling basis. From what I can tell about past years, they tend to give out most of their grants during the middle of April. I was surprised to get an award last week.

Between LSN and here, only three people have reported getting aid. I seriously doubt that Berkeley is anywhere close to done. If you want more than speculation, I suggest giving them a call on Monday.

Finally got around to checking my BearFacts report; 17K in grant money (at least for 1L), but no mention of scholarships. I'm withdrawing tomorrow regardless, but this looks like some money going back into the pot

Kretzy wrote:Finally got around to checking my BearFacts report; 17K in grant money (at least for 1L), but no mention of scholarships. I'm withdrawing tomorrow regardless, but this looks like some money going back into the pot

I'm going to be adding some to yours, Kretzy, but mine is a little larger so It's harder to let go.

Kretzy wrote:Finally got around to checking my BearFacts report; 17K in grant money (at least for 1L), but no mention of scholarships. I'm withdrawing tomorrow regardless, but this looks like some money going back into the pot

I'm going to be adding some to yours, Kretzy, but mine is a little larger so It's harder to let go.

Your grant was incredible. I never applied for matching, so I don't know what they would've done in light of my money from SLS. Does this mean you're set on Stanford?

Does anyone know if grant and merit scholarships are awarded separately? My Bear Facts page says I received a nice 15K grant for 2010-2011, but I'm not sure if that means I'm getting $0 from the matching program.

Okay, so I'm confused. I just went to go check the status of my financial aid award, and it says that my file is incomplete. I've given them FAFSA, Need Access, and the Matching Scholarship form, and I just double checked to make sure that they were all submitted properly. What more could they want?